Michael Hiltzik: America's retirement system is mediocre. The new House speaker wants to make it downright awful
Back in my school days, a C grade was a certification of rank mediocrity. That's the right way to think about a recent scorecard on which the U.S. retirement system scored an inexcusably deficient C+.
That grade placed the U.S. behind Netherlands, Iceland and Israel (all A's); and Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland (all solid B's or B+). If you're looking for bragging rights, the U.S. came in about even with France.
The scores come to us from the business consulting firm Mercer, which ranked 47 national pension systems for its Global Pension Index on standards such as adequacy, sustainability (including the reliability of funding) and integrity (such as the regulation of private pension providers).
That C+ might be just good enough for a lazy student to win through to a college degree, but for the richest country in the world with the most vigorous and diversified industrial economy,
